Page 109 of The Pirate and the Pagan
Once again Barbara Castlemaine redecorated her bedchamber in her magnificent house just a stone’s throw from Whitehall. The bed was massive, its great feather mattresses covered by purple satin sheets, embroidered with crowns. The headboard had two naked cherubs holding a golden crown between them in the Restoration design that had come to be known as boys and crown.
When Charles had arrived, she saw that swift demanding impatience on his face which gave her such a feeling of power. Now, two hours later, he lay sprawled naked against her, his slack mouth touching one opulent breast.
Barbara took careful aim and tossed a candied violet onto his groin. Like a great beast his flaccid member awoke and stretched itself. “Surely you don’t think me capable of another joust?” he murmured huskily, a sweet smile curving his mouth.
“You are the King, darling,” she purred. “You are omnipotent.” She picked up her garters from the floor, where they had been so hastily discarded, giving him a tempting view of her derriere. She tossed a garter so that it encircled his semiaroused cock like a ring toss at a fair. By the time she looped the second garter over his enormous shaft, it was standing at attention like a six-foot yeoman of the guard. “Turnabout is fair play,” she said throatily. “Since you did all the work the first three times, it’s my turn.” She lifted herself above him, straddled his thighs, then bent forward to remove her lacy garters from his maypole with her sharp little teeth, then she positioned herself so that she slowly swallowed him until all nine inches were thrust up inside her.
Charles had missed these afternoons of endurance while they had been holed up at the inn in Salisbury where the walls had been paper thin. Barbara was unmatched in bed. When it came to love-making, she was aggressive, with a lusty passion that struck a chord in his own deep sensuality, and she was very, very vocal. Her cries of pleasure filled the house as she plunged down upon him, as if she wanted all the world to know her body was joined to that of the King of England.
Charles cupped her magnificent buttocks to help balance her in her wild ride to satiety. Her melon-shaped breasts swung forward with each gyration and Charles’s mouth gave them small love bites, enjoying her little screams interspersed with deep moans. In actuality they were perfectly matched sexually, for Charles usually had delayed climax, which allowed Barbara a full thirty minutes of creamy friction to indulge and satisfy her carnality.
Ironically this was the reason lovemaking was so unsatisfactory between Charles and his little queen Catherine. Because of her strict religious upbringing, she was crippled by her inhibitions and she was never aroused enough to take all nine inches of her husband. She was too dry and he often became lodged halfway inside her. All his endearments and whispered encouragement that she relax had little effect because she usually experienced very real pain. Charles was ever patient and kind, but he more or less had to masturbate after their unsatisfactory attempts to get her with child, and he despaired that in the royal bed his rampant virility would always go to waste.
He sighed as he thought of Catherine’s delayed return to London so that she could visit the wells at Tonbridge, said to be a tonic to aid conception. He also knew she planned a pilgrimage to Our Lady’s Shrine at Southwark Priory to pray for a child. Charles knew the only way to make a woman conceive was by planting his seed in her. Hadn’t he proved it often enough with Barbara?
At that moment he felt his seed start and Barbara milked him until he was drained of every last drop. Now, if she’d just allow him an hour’s slumber to regain his vigor in time for tonight’s bachelor party for Charles Berkeley …
At Barbara’s instigation her cousin Buckingham had been urging Charles to set Catherine aside and marry again so there would be a legitimate heir to the throne. But while the court had been at Salisbury, Charles had kept Barbara at arm’s length and seemed to prefer the company of silly Frances Stewart, who trumpeted her virginity at every opportunity until Barbara feared that if Charles did choose another wife, she would have to be virgin. She must get her head together with Buckingham again to see what they could do to destroy Frances Stewart’s reputation.
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, didn’t realize it but he was skating on very thin ice with the King at the moment. Live and let live was Charles’s attitude toward most of his courtiers, but George had been involved lately in what amounted to plots against the Queen, which was tantamount to hatching plots against the King. He was also creating a public scandal with Anna Maria Shrewsbury and a private one with his invitations for his favorites to dine at his “high” table.
Tonight, however, Charles chose to be in a magnanimous mood toward Buckingham as they sat around the large oval gambling table with a dozen other courtiers. The entire chorus from the King’s Theatre Royal had been invited to entertain at Berkeley’s bachelor party and almost every man at the table had a scantily clad actress perched on his knee. The byplay and bawdy remarks were most diverting, but Edward Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, one of the few men without a companion, had been winning and was growing impatient with their antics. “God’s flesh, Lauderdale, keep your fingers out of her, you’re getting the cards all sticky,” he drawled wittily.
The Scot, Lauderdale, was one of the coarsest men in the kingdom, but he amused the King and of course that was his saving grace in everyone’s eyes. He asked Sandwich, “Can’t ye get yer prick up these days, laddie? D’ye have a dent in yer balls?”
Sandwich threw him an amused glance. “Actually I’m off sex for the moment. Did you never notice that as the bills of a mistress mount, the pleasure diminishes?”
Buckingham drawled, “I should tempt you by inviting you to dine at my ‘high’ table.”
“I’ve heard whispers about that. What’s it all about?” asked Sandwich.
Buckingham said mockingly, “We dine and place high-stakes bets at the table. We are served by Oriental girls. How about tomorrow evening? Sandwich? Lauderdale? Your Majesty? Shall we make a foursome?”
The King looked at him quizzically. “I remember a Chinese girl once; did an unbelievably erotic trick with a string of pearls. Well, why not, George, you’ve dined at my high table for years.”
The Duchess of Buckingham was now living in the country because Villiers had made it plain that conjugal bliss was not and never would be to his jaded taste. He had taken the first steps down deviation road and found it to his liking.
When all three of his guests had assembled the following evening, he asked each of them to change into a black silk robe embroidered with golden dragons then led them to an intimate dining room whose centerpiece was indeed a “high” table inlaid with lapis lazuli. The room was paneled in silver and gold and needed little illumination.
The table was set with delicate porcelain and at each setting was a jade dice box which held carved ivory dice. The gentlemen had to sit on tall stools because of the dining table’s height. An air of expectation filled the air as a houseboy entered the room to light incense and theatrically strike a brass gong. Then four Oriental girls, naked even of body hair, entered the room in a procession. Each balanced three golden chafing dishes upon each arm and each girl served only one man. They were served a potent rice wine, and as the anticipation for what would follow piqued their curiosities, Lauderdale opened his mouth to ask a lewd question. Buckingham placed a finger to his lips and said, “Silence is golden. When we do not speak, all our other senses are heightened. We’ll play a simple game of hazard—the dice will speak for us. The wrinkle is, gentlemen, the first to utter a sound pays a fine of five hundred crowns.”
Lauderdale and Sandwich opened their mouths to protest, then thought better of it. Charles’s eyes were like black obsidian as he watched Buckingham with moody cynicism. When the Oriental girls had satisfied one appetite, they prepared themselves to satisfy another. Their slim, naked beauty in the silver and gold light turned their skins to iridescent pearl. They went to the far end of the “high” table, opened a low door, and disappeared inside. Suddenly three pairs of eyes opened wide in shocked surprise as the men felt their robes opened and their sex organs manipulated by the exquisite touch of fingers and lips.
Lauderdale moaned his pleasure in a thick, unintelligible brogue and Buckingham said smoothly, “That will be five hundred crowns, John. I hope this game doesn’t prove too rich for your blood!”
Charles stood up and said with distaste, “George, I like women. I have a reputation for being a womanizer, as you all know. But I have never knowingly degraded a woman in my life and I’m not about to start doing so now.” He reached a hand below the table and helped the beautiful girl to climb out from underneath. “Come, my dear, I’m sure we can find a bedchamber where we can be private.” He swept George with a look of contempt and led the girl from the room.
Just before Christmas, Buckingham was the central figure in a quarrel with Shrewsbury. Both King and Court were shocked that he fought a forbidden duel with the old earl and killed him, and at last Charles lost his temper and banished his old friend Villiers from Court.
That winter turned out to be the coldest that England had experienced in a century. Rather than hampering the frivolities of the court, however, it aided them in their voracious quest for new and unique diversions. The canal which Charles had designed in St. James Park froze solid and the place was turned into a winter wonderland. A carnival atmosphere prevailed, where skating, sliding, and snowball fights became the fashionable thing to do. The pathways were crowded with sleighs pulled by colorfully decorated miniature horses and a great ice house was constructed where the revelers could warm up with buttered ale, hot rum toddies, and partridge pies.
In January even the River Thames froze over and Londoners imitated the antics of the King’s court and frolicked on the ice like children. Booths sprang up offering food and potent drink to ward off the chill, and of course entrepreneurs offered everything from skates to roast chestnuts. Punch and Judy shows vied for space next to fortune-tellers’ booths. Betting on trotter races became all the rage; surely a pig on ice was the funniest thing Londoners had seen since dancing dogs performed on heated metal platforms.
Summer was far too involved with her own small world to attend the festivities of the winter season. With the help of Auntie Lil she furnished the new house in Friday Street and hibernated there with Mrs. Bishop to await the birth of her child. She noted with grim satisfaction that all the bills presented to Lord Helford through Solomon Storm were paid without question.
The first week of February the midwife moved in, bringing her birthing stool and all the tools of her trade, and Mrs. Bishop fussed about until Summer thought she would go mad. She longed to escape her confines some days and her imagination flew her off to the isolated beach in Cornwall where she rode Ebony through the azure sea, warmed by the gulf stream. Her beloved Cornwall, where the ever-blooming flowers turned the soft air to scented seduction and every fantasy ended in memories of the first time she had offered her naked breasts to Ru in that perfect pink dawn so long ago.
She was brought back to the present by a sudden agonizing pain which seared through her midsection like a slash from a cutlass. Mrs. Bishop and the midwife urged her to lie back on the slanted birthing stool with its cutout seat, but after an hour’s ordeal she pushed herself to her feet, using the armrests, and paced about like a caged lionness. Day turned into night and labor almost cut her in half, hour after relentless hour. The only relief she felt was when she threw her head back and screamed curses upon Ruark Helford’s head, then as an afterthought she did the same to Rory just in case he was the author of her misery.
